(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for providing a mobile P2P service.
(b) Description of the Related Art
As many people use mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs nowadays, Peer-to-Peer (hereinafter, ‘P2P’) networking in mobile environments is getting more and more attention.
The P2P in mobile environments is different from the P2P in fixed environments that has been studied a lot in the past because mobile devices are objects with mobility and each of them has limited communication coverage.
Moreover, as the performance of smartphones has seen much improvement, a wide variety of application services are being delivered. Especially, the demand for large volumes of multimedia traffic is sharply growing.
Meanwhile, distributed service technologies, such as Peer-to-Peer (P2P), are widely used in wired networks in order to accept large volumes of traffic like IPTV, distribute the load of a server, and prevent bottlenecks in a particular network segment.
However, in the case that a distributed service technology such as P2P is applied to wireless networks, it is not appropriate to adapt the technology as it is because wireless link fees imposed on subscribers are high, compared to wired ones, and transfer rates are low and unstable.
The following problem is expected to appear when a mobile P2P service is realized. That is, if a receiving mobile peer is disconnected during movement, or loses its connection because the battery has run out, a transmitting mobile peer will continuously transmit content without knowing about the disconnection while the mobile peer on the other side cannot receive the content, resulting in a loss of the content. However, if the mobile peer resumes its connection later, it will seek retransmission, and the mobile peer on the other side will repeat transmission. Thus, the overload and waste of wireless traffic are expected. Moreover, the probability of such a situation is considerably high, compared to wired links, because wireless links are unstable than the wired ones.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.